The Return of the Girl Detective

By Ryan R. Kelley | From Prairie Schooner – Fall 2026

And you wake up the next day, and the next day, and years later, after everything that’s happened, and everything that never happened, in the midst of this miserable winter, in the blue-gray morning darkness of your bedroom. He is still asleep beside you. You open your eyes and stare at the ceiling, listening to the deep draw of his breath as he sleeps. You feel it more each day. The pull. The fight of something alive, something growing inside of you that can’t be ignored any longer. You remember the girl you were before all of this, and you can’t decide if the memory of that girl is enough to get you up each morning or send you crashing to your knees for the last time.

If you want to get up, go to 2.

If you want to stay in bed with him, go to 3.

You leave him there sleeping as the morning light begins to fill the room. You’ve worn your heavy socks to bed, and one of them slips down around your ankle as you shuffle, half asleep, into the kitchen. You scoop the coffee from the bag and start the machine. The smell of the brewing coffee, always so comforting, is enough to send a wave of nausea rippling through you. You walk to the living room and sit down, unsure whether you’ll even be able to drink a cup this morning. The whole room needs tidying up, but you’re still so tired.

If you want to scroll on your phone, go to 4.

If you want to tidy up the room, go to 5.

You lay there, looking up at the ceiling, as the morning light slowly crawls into the room. After a moment, you roll onto your side and press close to him, running your hand over his shoulder and down his arm. He pulls away from you in his sleep and mumbles something under his breath. You roll back over and stare up at the ceiling again. There’s a way you want to be touched by somebody, but you can’t quite put it into words, not even to think about it. It’s a feeling down deep inside of you. Something needs to be satiated, but there are so few options available at the moment.

If you want to roll over in bed and scroll on your phone, go to 4.

If you want to go over what happened the other night, go to 6.

You scroll through your largest social media account. Men of a certain age, remembering you from their childhood, will often slide into your DMs and send the usual garbage that men send. A momentary thrill for them that, were you not accustomed to this sort of thing, is enough to make your skin crawl the whole day through. You remember what Mrs. Agnes Maplethorpe, octogenarian sleuth, told you years ago during the Mystery of the Maundering Macaw.

“A woman—young, old or unaffiliated—must gird herself against the natural tendencies of men whenever she’s gifted the splendor of a new day.”

Luckily, there’s nothing to shock you today in your DMs. You check the news, though, and nearly drop your phone when you read about the Boy Detective. They use that terrible image of him from that ill-advised livestream he broadcast two years ago. The article extensively documents his pitiful decline after the TV series wrapped nearly thirty years ago and how, in recent years, he’s started believing that the television persona was a cover for his hidden identity as a genuine kid detective.

A sickness settles in the pit of your stomach. You get up and get dressed for work.

Go to 7.

His shoes are on the floor. His hoodie is on the floor. Two empty beer cans and a popcorn bowl are on the floor. You pick all these up and rearrange the throw pillows on the sofa. The hole he punched into the back wall the other night is still there. He was gaming all evening. He and his friends lost a close match. He’s very passionate.

If you want to sit down and scroll on your phone, go to 4.

If you’re ready to leave the house, go to 8.

There was such anger inside him the other night. He spent the whole evening glued to the screen. When he lost, he came unhinged, punching a hole through the wall. It didn’t frighten you. You’re the Girl Detective, and you are used to violence. You understand how to operate under violent conditions. What frightens you is the relief you felt. Relief that he was showing emotion, showing passion about anything at all.

If you want to get up, go to 2.

If you want to scroll on your phone, go to 4.

You sit in the parking lot outside of work and clutch the steering wheel. Snow is beginning to fall, and the heater is blasting hot air on your neck and face. You check your appearance in the mirror and watch the air toss the ends of your hair back slightly. You posted a video of yourself last week, and one of the commenters said you looked desperate and old. Another called you the Sun-Damaged Detective. You remember something the great tenor, Giovanni Bonetti, told you during the Mystery of the Disappearing Diva.

“Time is a currency we cannot bank.”

You touch your face gently, insecurely, and wonder where all the days have gone.

If the feel of your hand on your face makes you think of the Boy Detective, go to 9.

If it doesn’t make you think of him, go to 10.

You get ready for work and rush outside. The wind blows through you. As you walk to the car, you notice two men you’ve never seen before standing at the corner of the street. They’re facing one another, but your instincts tell you something is amiss. They cast sideways glances at you as you open the door to your car. You start the engine and wait a few minutes as they continue pretending to talk there on the corner. You pull away and leave them behind.

Go to work, and go to 7.

You still remember that first kiss. How gentle he was under the boardwalk. Which one was that? The Mystery of the Bashful Banshee. There was no episode titled that, so why do these names, these case files to events that never happened, come so readily to your mind when you look back on those days? What happened? Where are these memories coming from?

A knock on the passenger’s side window jars you from your thoughts. The two men from the corner earlier in the morning are standing beside your car, shivering in the snow.

If you want to talk to them, go to 12.

If you back the car out of the parking lot and drive away, go to 13.

You go into work. You will go into work tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Sometimes people leave for other jobs, leave to start families. One or two of the adventurous types leave to be with someone they love. When the people leave, there is a party in the break room with cake, the good cake that everyone loves but that you secretly hate because there’s too much icing at the edges. As you shovel spoonful after spoonful of the cake into your mouth, all thoughts of being the Girl Detective leave your mind. Driving back home at the end of the day, you can’t remember if there was cake today or not.

Go to 40.

It’s one of the rings they gave out to children who signed up for membership in the Society of Mystery during the original run of the show. It was basically a way to aggregate names for a glorified mailing list. Members were still getting offers for sea monkeys and X-ray specs well into adulthood. Those rings were cheap, though, and this one seems much sturdier, much more solidly built than you remember. Maybe this was one of the actual props used on the show. They came up for auction online every now and then, going for much more than they were worth. These weren’t one-of-a-kind items. There were dozens, maybe a hundred, rings used throughout the run of the series. It’s a solid silver ring with a blue stone of some sort set in the center. Just below that, at the shoulder, is a series of six windows featuring strange glyphs—two each on the broad sides and one apiece on the narrow portions. Placing your finger inside the windows, you can rotate the glyphs. There are eight in each window. You need to find out more information about the origin of this ring. You could skip work and drive back home to study it closer or you could pay a visit to your old friend Omar the Amazing, who owns a magic shop in the city, just an hour drive on the highway. Either way, this is no day to come into work.

If you want to take the ring home, go to 14.

If you want to take the ring to Omar the Amazing, go to 22.

You pause for a moment and watch the two men, hands in pockets, shuffle back and forth, one foot to the next, to stay warm against the wind and snow. They’re middle-aged—paunchy, receding hairlines—one has a beard and the other is clean-shaven. The clean-shaven one stuffs his head through the window and smiles broadly. He greets you by your name.

“Wow, can’t believe it’s really you,” he says breathlessly. “I mean, I know it’s you, but I can’t believe it.”

You smile graciously and ask him what he wants. There’s more shuffling, and you realize it’s a bashful, awkward-around-women shuffle. He hands you an envelope.

“From a friend,” he says, as you take the envelope from his hands.

“He said you’re the only one that knew the code,” he says.

“The code to what?” you ask.

The man looks sheepishly around. “To call out the reserves. So we can get to the bottom of all this.”

“What kind of imprecise nonsense is that?” you ask.

The man shrugs. “To be honest. We don’t know why he wants you to have it. We thought maybe you could clue us in.”

You open the envelope once they’ve gone. Inside is one of those secret rings they gave out to anyone who joined the Society of Mystery during the original run of the series.

If you want to slip the ring back in the envelope and get to work, go to 10.

If you want to examine the ring, go to 11.

The two men launch themselves backward as you shift the car into reverse and speed out of the parking space. The car fishtails briefly before you straighten it up and fly out of the lot. Your mind races at the thought of the two middle-aged men following you to work. They were paunchy, with receding hairlines. One was clean-shaven and the other had a brown, curly, unkempt beard that edged too far down his neck to be pleasant.

You drive around town in a haze as the wind and snow both pick up force. You’re gone for over an hour when you realize that you haven’t called into work. You pull into the parking lot of a diner and make the call. You never call in, and Louisa, the woman at the front desk, seems genuinely concerned. You cough a few times, just to be believable, but when you’ve put your phone down, you can feel that gnawing, nauseous feeling in the pit of your stomach again. A bite to eat might be the best thing for you right now. Then again, food might increase the nausea you feel.

If you want to go into the diner for a bite to eat, go to 18.

If you want to get back on the road, go to 25.

The snow is falling hard when you arrive back home. There’s a small room upstairs with a desk. You’ve called it, at various points, the guest room and the craft room. Right now, you call it your home office, but you never work from here, preferring the living room downstairs with the hole punched into the wall. You don’t want to look at the hole right now, so you head up to the home office. You place the ring on the desk and turn on the lamp, holding the lamp over it. It’s too well crafted, too durable, to be one of the prop rings. You’re no jewelry expert, but you’re almost certain now that the ring is made of real silver.

“Hmm, where did you come from, little ring?” you ask. You study it closely, fascinated by the mystery of it. Suddenly, your concentration is broken by a knock at the front door downstairs.

If you want to ignore the knock and attempt to solve the ring, go to 33.

If you want to answer the knock at the door, go to 37.

Whatever answers you’re seeking won’t be found with Omar. You never want to see him again. You turn off your phone and focus on the highway in front of you. You’ve driven only a short time when the wheel begins to feel strange in your hands, as though you’re holding it from a long way away. You feel yourself begin to float above the car as you watch yourself drive along the highway. The outlines of the scene, the outline of the woman in the car, her hands, the wheel, it all grows fuzzy, like a memory from a long time ago. Your life is a labyrinth. Feelings—love, desire, fear—just corridors conveying us to memories, to the hidden chambers of ourselves. Two nights present themselves at the edge of your mind. One of you and the Boy Detective in the rain. Another of Omar with a bright silver ring on his finger. You feel yourself drifting toward one memory over the other.

If you remember the Boy Detective in the rain, go to 16.

If you remember Omar’s silver ring, go to 17.

The search parties are breaking up for the night, the bright beams of their flashlights cutting through the distant foothills. The Boy Detective frowns at you, his face slick from the rain. The sheriff has given you both windbreakers to wear, but they do little to protect you from the unusually biting wind coming in off the water.

A look of consternation crosses the sheriff’s face, but he doesn’t allow it to linger. He forces a smile and shoves his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker.

“We appreciate all the help you kids have given us,” he says. “I don’t want you two to blame yourselves. Sometimes cases just go cold. We can’t win `em all.”

The Boy Detective looks down at the ground and nods. The sheriff opens his mouth to say more but stops himself. A deputy calls him away and he leaves the two of you standing there near the shoreline.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” says the Boy Detective. “They were a step ahead of us the whole time. Whoever knows what happened to Sydney Ridley knows us—knows us better than we know ourselves.”

Go to 20.

There’s a large hookah on the table in Omar the Amazing’s trailer. The whole cast and crew are breaking for a long lunch while the director goes over rewrites with the head writer. You and Omar have wrapped for the day, and he has invited you into his trailer for ice cream. You’ve never seen a hookah before, and when he asks if you want a smoke, you giggle and say “yes.” Smoke fills the room afterward as you sit next to him on the couch. As the shroud begins to lift from the room, he turns and places a thick hand on your shoulder.

“Good girl, habibi. Good girl,” he says.

On his pinky finger is a silver ring with a mesmerizing white stone. You stare at his face—the thin, arching eyebrows, the well-maintained mustache. Wrapped in the memory, you try to force your gaze downward toward his hands, to get one good look at the ring, but your eyes just stay there, locked on his face.

Go to 20.

The diner is empty this morning, except for a burly man in a flannel shirt sitting hunched over at the end of the bar. You sit and stare out the window for fifteen minutes before the waitress pushes the door open and comes shuffling out of the kitchen. She is heavyset and grimaces as she makes her way over to you. You’ve eaten here maybe two dozen times, and though she’s waited on you almost every time, you’ve never bothered to learn her name. It doesn’t make you feel like a bad person, but it doesn’t make you feel like a particularly good one, either.

She takes your order and you stare out the window, watching the snowfall on the highway. When the food comes, you eat slowly, still staring out the window. There is something at the edges of your thoughts, something like a memory you can’t quite cling to. When the waitress leaves the bill, you notice that the burly man at the bar is staring at you, running his eyes up and down the length of your body. He is emboldened, defiant, flashes a sickening smile when you notice what he’s doing.

If you want to ignore the man and continue looking out the window and thinking about the memory, go to 21.

If you want to pay the bill and leave, go to 26.

You shuffle into your favorite store as the snow falls down around you. It’s a large store, and the aisles are nearly deserted this morning. You walk through the aisles, aisle after aisle. You pick up items from off the shelves, look them over, examine them, and decide not to buy them. You find a scented candle. Its fragrance reminds you of the breeze off the ocean in California. You purchase it. The woman at the register compliments your nails. You compliment her smile. You go to another store, and another one. You buy other items. An older man, kindly, grandfatherly, smiles at you as you pass him in an aisle. You want to embrace him, kiss him full on the mouth, press your body against his. You buy a loofah and some bamboo placemats instead. You head home.

Go to 39.

You don’t want to think anymore. You can’t remember something—something you should remember—something you need to remember. You feel sick to your stomach. Your life is a fog. Numbness, but something still struggles to reach the surface. Something you can’t remember.

Go to 23.

Let him look. Eyes can’t penetrate you. Discipline. Discipline is required when you’re retreating into your mind to work through a problem, to untangle a thread, to unwind a Gordian knot, especially when that knot is your own mind. He’s a gnat, and gnats don’t concern you.

You had trouble with bugs when you were a girl. It was a fear, yes, but a fear that could be overcome. There had been enough adventures with the Boy Detective in dark places—places filled with spiders and cockroaches and all manner of slithering vermin. The bugs that confronted you in the natural course of sleuthing was one thing—immediate, confrontable. It was the bugs that you didn’t see that seemed to crawl all over you at night. After that last case, the one that broke up the Society of Mystery for good, your dreams were filled with bugs. They never found Sydney Ridley—you and the Boy Detective and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI—never found Sydney Ridley. At night you used to dream about her. Putrescent in the depths of the ocean. Fish nipping at her toes. Rotting in the woods. Bugs burrowing into her flesh.

You feel sick. Your head feels foggy.

Go to 23.

Omar was a friend and confidante to both you and the Boy Detective when you were children. There’s no reason you can’t count on him now, despite the long drive. It’s been ages since you’ve seen each other, but he recognizes you immediately when you walk through the front door of his shop. Above the door is a wooden sign with elaborate calligraphy that reads “Omar the Amazing’s Emporium of Curious Things.”

“Hello hello, habibi,” he says, rising from his chair behind the counter. His family was Sicilian, and Omar himself is originally from Red Hook, New Jersey, but he peppers his speech with Arabic words to add a touch of the exotic. He walks around the counter and embraces you in an all-encompassing hug that, you think, lasts a few seconds too long.

He looks impossibly old now. Though he was always bald everywhere except the sides, the pillows of black hair that used to ring his head were now completely white. Astonishingly, he wears the same general outfit he wore during the old days—a full tuxedo with tails and white gloves, all of which were now faded and threadbare.

But the years have changed your old friend. Omar begins telling you, in detail, the events of his life over the last several decades. There was a divorce, and another marriage, and another divorce. The world had grown stranger than anything the writers on their old television show could have ever imagined, he explains, full of all kinds of sinister forces conspiring against men like him. Men who understood tradition, men who understood the way things used to be, the way they still should be. The world was built on a foundation of lies, he tells you, from the alleged death of Adolf Hitler by suicide to the massive hoax that was the so-called moon landing in 1969. Forces were at work, more tricky and stupefying than any sleight of hand or magic trick he could have ever pulled off, he tells you. You listen for quite some time before you speak up.

“Well, I believe Occaam’s razor applies in situations such as these,” you say.

“Occam?” he says, furrowing his brow.

“Named for William of Ockham, influential English philosopher and theologian from the medieval period,” you say. “It allows us to cut away unnecessary assumptions. Briefly summarized, it states that we must shave away unnecessary assumptions and find the explanation with the smallest set of elements,” you say.

“And how does this apply to the United States government faking the moon landing?” asks Omar.

“Well, when last checked, there are over seventy individual space agencies across the globe. Many of them representing various and conflicting political and religious ideologies. What’s more likely? That the United States was able to invest massive amounts of money to land astronauts on the surface of the moon in 1969, or that the government engaged in a massive hoax to make its citizens believe they had landed on the moon, and then successfully enticed hundreds, if not thousands of workers on the project to take that secret to their graves, and that all the other seventy plus space agencies, some of which are in direct ideological conflict with the United States, took part in the cover-up, as they were created, over a period of decades.” You place your hands on your hips and flash him a wry smile.

“You, little lady, have grown into quite a smug little bitch,” he says, folding his arms and stiffening his jaw.

This ends the discussion of Ockham and his famous razor.

If you want to head straight home and study the ring, go to 14.

If you need to drive and clear your head, go to 27.

You’re still having trouble stringing thoughts together. The snow and wind make it difficult to drive on the highway, but you make it home. You imagine your thoughts not shrouded in a cold, wintery snowstorm but a warm, lingering fog, the kind that you and the Boy Detective had to row a dinghy through during the Mystery of the Laughing Lighthouse.

The fog covers you. Envelops you. Your head is shrieking with pain as you walk through the front door. You think maybe you should sleep. Maybe that will clear the fog. But then you remember what you said to the Boy Detective in the dinghy. Push through the fog until it clears, you said. It can’t go on forever.

If you decide not to sleep, go to 29.

If you think sleep would be best, go to 32.

You go home and throw on a pair of sweatpants and an oversized shirt. There was too much. It’s all too much to think about. It’s too much to wrap your mind around, the pathways each day that each life could go down. The possibilities multiply, one after another, washing over you, pouring down on you in a torrent, until there are so many choices you can’t see any choice at all. You pull the covers over you. You lie there for hours. You hear him downstairs, playing his game and talking to his online friends. Eventually, you fall asleep.

Go to 1.

Something inside of you tells you not to stop, that the walls of a building, whether it’s a diner or an office or anything in between, will choke this living thing inside of you that’s struggling to get out. You drive, but your mind doesn’t find clarity, doesn’t go blank.

There is so much to think about on any given day, so many ideas that penetrate us, ideas that, under the right hands, could be shaped, honed, sent forth into the world as actions. You used to be a person of action, you think. There is a vague recollection that you were once a living, breathing force for change in the world. It’s been so long since you felt anything close to that, though, since you felt any significant difference between one day and the next. You feel the fears and anxieties beginning to pile up in your mind. You need to do something.

If you think some shopping might clear your head and improve your mood, go to 19.

If you would rather go back home and put all your thoughts behind you for the day, go to 24.

You stay on the road, even as the snow falls harder and a layer of ice begins to crust over the backroads surrounding the village where you live. The roads wind around the foothills and you feel yourself press your foot harder and harder against the pedal. The car lurches, picks up speed. You’re racing through the turns for the better part of an hour when the car suddenly slides off the road toward a cluster of large white fir trees. Those defensive driving lessons you and the Boy Detective took from Hot Rod Harlow during the Mystery of the Sneezing Stuntman pay off on this day, though. You guide the vehicle into a controlled spin that misses the trees and takes you end-first into an icy embankment.

You sit there, hands shaking, and begin to cry. You should call him, you think, the man you live with. You try to stifle your sobs while you think about what to do.

If you want to call him on the phone, go to 34.

If the thought of a conversation with him leaves you cold, go to 35.

You leave Omar with a curt “goodbye” and start back on the road. You’re on the highway for less than ten minutes when your phone rings. It’s a number you’ve never seen before, and you let it go to voicemail. You check the message and hear Omar’s voice on the other end. He’s sorry, very sorry, for losing his temper back there in the shop. He’s an old, silly man, who’s set in his ways these days, he says. He’s wondering if you might have stopped by to ask about a ring, a ring that you might have recently come into possession of. He can tell you all about it, if he can get a look at it first hand. Call him at the number, he says, so he can talk to you about it.

You continue to drive, staring out at the gray highway in winter. You’ve never given Omar your phone number. It’s strange that he would have it. Maybe you should break off any further contact. Then again, he might have information that could help you solve the mystery of the ring. You grit your teeth and slam your palm against the steering wheel. Why does so much of life involve placating angry old men?

If you want to call Omar back, go to 30.

If you think it’s best not to call him back, go to 15.

It’s dark by the time you arrive home. The house is empty. You send him a quick text:

Taking a walk to the fish hatchery.

He responds a few seconds later:

Lol wtf

The hatchery sits several yards away from the road, at the far end of a broad parking lot pockmarked by the years. Moonlight bounces off the Sound tonight, hitting the rusted metal roof and graffiti-slathered sides of the hatchery. The effect is unnerving, as the silhouette of the building casts gloomy shadows in the immediate vicinity. A large sycamore stands near the entrance, its roots have broken apart the asphalt, revealing the wet earth underneath. Parked under the tree is Omar the Amazing’s familiar mode of transportation, a 1977 Impala. The Boy Detective once looked up the official color in an old Chevrolet handbook. Firethorn. A 1977 firethorn-colored Chevy Impala. And it was still running after all these years.

The door at the front entrance is open. You walk inside. A dozen large metal vats stand in rows running the length of the building with a path large enough for an automobile running between them. At the far end of the building, shadowed by moonlight twisting its way through the cracked windows, stands Omar the Amazing. He wears some kind of cloak, and you see, with adult eyes, how ludicrous his flair for the dramatic seems in these kinds of situations.

“Good evening, habibi,” he says. “I trust you weren’t followed here. There are more nefarious characters afoot than you could ever imagine.”

You slowly begin to walk toward him.

“How did you get the ring?” he asks.

“From a friend,” you say.

“You really don’t know anything about it, do you?” he asks.

“I’m learning more about it all the time,” you say.

“I think I could help expedite your area of inquiry,” he says, when you’re standing in front of him. “Would you agree to let me take the ring back with me to study?”

“I think I can open up my own lines of inquiry,” you say.

Omar takes a step toward you. He is tall; he feels almost as large and overpowering as he did when you were a girl.

“Habibi, I’m afraid this ring might involve you in some unpleasantness related to that childhood friend of yours who lost his mind. I wouldn’t want you to suffer the same mental break he appears to be suffering,” he says.

The conversation goes on like this for some time. For a moment, he looms over you, and it appears as though he’s going to grab hold of you, search your body for the ring, and take it by force. He stops short of this and, still smiling, he bids you “good night” as he opens the front door.

“Tread carefully amongst the dark places, habibi,” he says. “There are places light can’t touch.”

You think about his words as you stand there in the hatchery, listening to the sound of the Impala drive off into the distance. You feel powerful, standing there in the dark, and the icons on the ring suddenly begin to make sense in your mind. The Boy Detective used to call you Athena; it was his name for you whenever you needed to send coded messages. There is enough moonlight to guide you as you maneuver the icons into their proper slots in the ring’s windows. You click Athena’s owl into place, then Saraswati’s flowing lines of water; then the Spider-Grandmother’s spider, the lotus flower of Anahita and Frigg the Soul-Spinner’s spindle. The large center stone instantly beams a bright white, dispersing the darkness of the hatchery. After a few seconds, it begins to pulsate. You hold the ring up over your head triumphantly before placing it in your pocket and walking through the front entrance.

Go to 36.

These things must be met head on. There was really no way around it all. Sleep won’t solve anything, and the weariness will linger when you’re awake once again. You go upstairs and throw on a pair of sweatpants and an oversized hoodie. You sit down on the sofa and begin scrolling on your phone. You scroll until the day is nearly done and the shadows in the room begin to lengthen.

If you want to call your therapist, go to 31.

If you want to try to solve the mystery of the ring, go to 33.

You’re reluctant to call him back, but any information you can find out regarding the ring will shed light on the mystery that is beginning to surround your life. He wants to meet with you. He knows the name of the village where you’re now living and goes on at length about the time he escaped from the patented Triple-Locked Box while sitting at the bottom of the Sound. He sounds like the Omar you used to know when he says, in rolling, grandiose tones, that the dark waters of the Sound could have been “his own watery graveyard had he lost his wits down there in the murky depths.”

There’s a fish hatchery down the street from you, he remembers, perhaps the two of you can meet there tonight to make sure nobody overhears your conversation.

“I have highly secretive information for you, habibi,” he says. “Highly secretive!”

The hairs on the back of your arms begin to rise. You feel as though you’re in the murky depths yourself, but Omar may be your only chance to solve the mysteries surrounding the ring.

If you agree to meet with him at the fish hatchery, go to 28.

If the thought of meeting him in the hatchery seems like too great a risk to take, go to 15.

Your therapist’s voice is warm and comforting, as always. You feel an immediate sense of ease. You discuss your struggles with self-confidence and the patterns you fall into during your day-to-day life. You don’t mention the ring or the persistent feeling that there are things about your past that you can’t quite remember. Still, your therapist senses something, and what she says stops you cold.

“You’ve never quite been able to define yourself outside of your relationships to the men around you.”

You don’t respond, but she hears your breath quicken.

“I can fit you in with my last spot this afternoon,” she says. “Four-thirty.”

You look over the ring that afternoon while you’re waiting to see her, and it begins making sense. The Boy Detective loved mythology, and he has scratched the Chinese character for “woman” into the inside band of the ring. Each window contains one glyph that corresponds to a goddess from a different tradition. There’s a spider for the Spider-Grandmother of North American tradition; an owl representing the Greek goddess Athena; flowing lines of watering for Saraswati, Hindu goddess of learning and the arts; the lotus flower of Anahita, Persian goddess of health and fertility; a spindle for the Norse goddess of fertility and marriage, Frigg the Soul-Spinner; and a hieroglyph of the Egyptian goddess Isis. You slide them all into place and press a small button on the band of the ring. The center stone begins to glow brightly, pulsating brighter and dimmer, as though it’s transmitting something to someone.

You smile, awed by both the light and your own cleverness. Your appointment is only half an hour away, and you decide to walk uptown despite the cold. The evening sun is playing tricks with the branches of the trees as you pass and the silhouettes of the old brick buildings that dot the cozy little waterside town where you’ve settled. Your therapist has an office on the third floor of an old refurbished warehouse built in the 1890s. It looms over the surrounding landscape, sitting on a block by itself three blocks away from the main drag of the village. You feel a strange sentience from the building each time you walk in the front door, as though it is swallowing you whole.

The session with your therapist is good, though, and when you leave, all anthropomorphic traits you’ve assigned to the building have evaporated.

Go to 36.

It’s time to sleep. There will be no clear thinking without a clear mind, and you see no possibility of your mind clearing tonight. You put on a pair of sweatpants and an oversized hoodie. You crawl into bed and wrap the covers tight around your neck and fall asleep. It’s late afternoon when you wake up, and the bedroom is already beginning to darken. You get up, fix yourself a meal, and sit on the sofa. You scroll on your phone until you hear the front door open. He walks into the kitchen, grabs a beer from the refrigerator, and walks into the living room. He sits down beside you, opens the beer, and starts playing the same game he played the night before. You watch him play for a few hours before retreating back to the bedroom. You lie in bed for a few more hours, scrolling on your phone, exhausted, but not tired enough to sleep. He comes to bed hours later and tells you that too much screen time will rot your brain. Soon you hear the deep draws of his breath. You fall asleep a few minutes later.

Go to 1.

You shuffle through the icons in the windows of the ring for some time, lost in thought about what any of it could mean. You turn the ring upside down, and run a finger along the inside, down to the base. The base holds a small raised button the size of the head of a pin. You hesitate for a quick second while you think of pushing the button. You stop yourself, though, and go back to examining the markings in the windows. Most of them are simple icons—an arrow, a sun, a spider, an infinity symbol—but one, in the back window, catches your attention and you find yourself flicking back to it again and again. It’s an ornately etched hieroglyph of a woman, one that, you remember from the Mystery of the Sinister Sphinx, represents the Egyptian goddess Isis.

You place the ring back on the desk and look it over again. You pick it up and, holding it to the light and closing one eye, you look for any additional markings on the inside of the shank. There’s scratching, some kind of markings, on the inside. A closer look reveals the following:

女人

Deliberate scratches, you think. Chinese, you think. You search online and find the answer. It is Chinese. The traditional word for “woman.” The icons make sense in the windows now. You see them all and smile to yourself, remembering the Boy Detective’s love of comparative mythology. You click the owl into place, representing Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom; then the flowing lines of water, representing Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and abundance; then the spindle of Frigg the Soul-Spinner, Norse goddess of marriage and motherhood; then the lotus flower of Anahita, the Persian goddess of health and fertility, among other domains, and then the spider guise of the Spider-Grandmother from Native American lore. You lock Isis into place last and press the button inside the ring.

The large center stone glows, filling the dark room with a luminous white light for several seconds before it fades a bit and begins to blink, to pulsate, with clear white light as though it were broadcasting to somebody somewhere. You stare at the ring in wonder and smile at your accomplishment before slipping the ring into the pocket of your sweater.

The room goes dark, and you realize that night has fallen. You suddenly feel an inexplicable need to take a walk, down to the nearby lane that leads to an old abandoned fish hatchery down by the Sound. You’ve lived nearby for several years now and you’ve never explored it. Tonight, you will finally do it.

Go to 38.

You need to hear his voice. As much as it embarrasses you to admit it, those inadvertent intimacies he gives you—the sound of his voice, the warmth of his body near you in bed—give you a comfort, a comfort you’re afraid to ever lose. A small smile crosses your face when he answers. You ask him how his day is going, and he tells you about his morning meeting and the project that’s coming due at the end of the week. You can hear the click-clack of computer keys as he talks. You wait for him to ask you about your day, but he never does. You tell him you love him and that you’ll see him later.

“Love ya, babe,” he says.

You toss your phone on the passenger’s seat and drive the car out of the embankment and head home.

Go to 39.

You shake the thought away. There’s nothing anybody can do to help you, and crying about it won’t improve your situation. You realize that crying can’t always be helped. It’s an understandable response to an emotional situation, but it serves no logical purpose when a solution is required. You wipe your eyes and put the car in drive, steering it gently out of the embankment and toward home.

Go to 40.

You leave the strange shadows of the building behind and step into the cold moonlight. You can’t deny it now. There is something alive inside of you, growing, manifesting itself more and more each minute you’re alive, struggling to find shape and form. You wonder if you are indeed going crazy.

You walk, and keep walking. You remember that there was once more to your life than this day-to-day existence. You still remember the truth. No matter what happens. No matter what remains hidden from you. You were the Girl Detective. You helped illuminate dark places. You feel shadows at the corners of your eyes, at the edges of your thoughts.

Everyone thinks they’re special, you think. Everyone has some story about themselves, and we’re always the hero, never the villain. That’s the problem with the world. Everyone’s the protagonist in their own poorly written book.

You think about Occam’s Razor. What is the simplest explanation? The simplest explanation—the explanation containing the fewest parts—is that you were once the Girl Detective. You were young, curious, inquisitive, with a desire to help those around you. Whether your memories are faulty or not, whether a series of traumatic misfortunes had befallen you or not, you were that thing—that young, curious, inquisitive thing. You were a continuing conundrum to yourself, and that was the strangest subtext to this whole mystery. How do we convince ourselves, day after day, that our power never existed at all?

You remove the ring from your pocket and place it on your finger. It continues to pulsate, continues to glow. You make your way to your front door. You can’t make sense of this ring or why the Boy Detective had it delivered to you, if he truly had it delivered at all. You look down the street into the darkness. You’re tired. You want to go to bed. You place the ring back in your pocket. To be the Girl Detective, you think to yourself, you must consciously and continuously remind yourself that you are indeed the Girl Detective, again and again, through all the years and all the humiliations, both big and small.

The ring continues to glow in the pocket of your pajama pants when you go to bed that night. You wonder who, if anyone, is on the other line. Maybe someone who wants to help. It’s a beautiful thought, and one you cling to as you fall asleep.

Go to 1.

You rush downstairs to the front door. The driver has left a package on the steps and is walking back to his truck. You take the package to the dining room table and slice through the packing tape with a knife. You receive several packages each week, and, each time, a small thrill shoots up your spine as you cut through the tape. It is the thrill of the new, the thrill of something unexplored, something novel. A break in the tedium that has become your life.

Today’s package is something decorative for the bedroom, something that ties the room together. You remove it from the packaging and take it up to the bedroom. It looks good there but requires an overhaul of the room. You move the bed by yourself. You hang and rehang pictures on the wall. You bring in a plant from the living room and place it on the dresser. You make lunch. You do the dishes. You sit down on the sofa. You scroll on your phone. You binge-watch television. Shadows fall over the living room.

Go to 39.

You throw on a parka and walk down the dark, icy lane to the hatchery. The building has been out of use for decades now. The metal roof is rusted and the sides of the building are covered in graffiti. Grass is growing through the cracked surface of the parking lot and, near the entrance, the roots of a nearby sycamore have thrust the ground upward and shattered the asphalt into pieces. The squat silhouette of the hatchery carves a gloomy figure against the moonlight reflecting off the water. It throws strange shadows on the ground as you walk to the entrance and lift the rusty latch from the door.

A horrible, generation-long must hits your nostrils the moment you walk through the door. You look over your surroundings and your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness. A path, large enough to drive a car through, runs down the center of the building, flanked on either side by a row of metal vats running the length of the building. Brown rust coats their tops. You grab hold of the lid on the nearest vat and heave it upward. Smells of rot and stagnant water overpower you. You look down into the dark water and see no bottom. Fear overtakes you and you pull back, allowing the lid to slam shut.

You close your eyes and imagine Sydney Ridley in the vat; you imagine a dozen Sydney Ridley’s in the dozen vats that lay waiting in this forgotten place—and all the dark, forgotten places of the world. Formless and forgotten in the places where the sun no longer shines. Your stomach lurches. You must leave this place at once.

Go to 36.

The sun sets early this time of year, and it’s dark before you know it. You sit on the sofa, scrolling on your phone for hours until you hear the front door open. He goes to the kitchen and opens a beer. He turns on the television and sits down beside you on the sofa, near the other night’s hole in the wall.

“How was your day?” you ask.

He sighs. “Same old bullshit.”

Soon he is talking to his friends online. You sit and scroll on your phone while he plays. You go to the kitchen after a while and make a meal for the two of you. You eat it beside him on the sofa while he plays his game. You go upstairs and stare at yourself in the mirror. You turn your face and shoulders, trying to capture an angle that will remind you of the Girl Detective. If you were once the Girl Detective, you wonder, did there remain a part of you that was forever the Girl Detective? Maybe that was the thing inside of you. Maybe it was the Girl Detective, or what’s left of her, trying to crawl out from the depths. The depths inside where life rots and slimy creatures nip at what you’ve left exposed.

You crawl into bed. You fall asleep and wake only when he comes in and lies next to you. You stay awake long enough to hear the deep draws of his breath beside you. You fall asleep.

Go to 1.

It’s dark when you arrive back home. You sit on the sofa, scrolling on your phone for a long time. He comes home and sits beside you, playing the same game he played the night before with the same people. You ask him if he’s hungry. He says yes, and you make a meal for the two of you. You sit beside each other on the sofa and eat together while he plays his game. You clean up afterward and take a long bubble bath. Something continues to claw at you, to pull at you from within. It stays with you. Sits on your chest when you slip into bed. Your eyelids grow heavy. You fall asleep. You wake briefly when he comes to bed. You stay awake long enough to hear the deep draws of his breath beside you. You fall asleep.

Go to 1.

Ryan R. Kelley is a writer living in Syracuse, New York, with his wife and son.